her songs (from her fourth album, Single White Female ) climbing the Billboard chart for twenty-nine weeks, hitting the #1 spot. She writes of sacrificing all for a shot at success that would come a couple of years later with her first hit single, “Shut Up And Drive”.

She describes writing and singing her own songs for producers who’d discovered and recorded the likes of Reba McEntire, Shania Twain, and Toby Keith, who heard in her music something special and signed her to a record contract, releasing her first album and sending her out on the road on her first bus tour. We see her, high school homecoming queen, heading out on her own at seventeen and landing a job as a featured vocalist on the Ozark Jubilee (the show that started Brenda Lee, Red Foley, and Porter Wagoner), being cast in Country Music U.S.A., doing four live shows a day, and-after only a few months in Nashville-her dream coming true, performing on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry. She writes of making up her mind at a young age to become a country music star, knowing then that her feelings and crushes on girls were “sinful” and hoping and praying that she would somehow be “fixed.” (“Dear God, please don’t let me be gay. She writes about her parents, putting down roots in their twenties in the farming town of Wellsville, Kansas, Old Glory flying atop the poles on the town’s manicured lawns, and being raised to believe that hard work, honesty, and determination would take her far. Chely Wright, singer, songwriter, country music star, writes in this moving, telling memoir about her life and her career about growing up in America’s heartland, the youngest of three children about barely remembering a time when she didn’t know she was different.

Chely wright memoir